I just got a shiny fancy new MSI GTX 970 this morning. When I installed it my PC will not fire up: the power light comes on for a fraction of a second and then immediately switches itself off. And yes, the first thing I checked was whether the PCIe power was connected properly. I had a warning message recently on boot about unstable power supply voltages, so I thought my power supply (Thermaltake Smart SE 630) had given up the ghost on me. I swapped in a different power supply, an EVGA SuperNOVA 550 GS, but I get exactly the same problem. Swapping to another PCIe port makes no difference and when I put my MSI GTX 760 back in my PC fires up without a hitch. This has happened on two power supplies so I doubt there's a fault there; I also doubt that it's an issue with having insufficient power as one is 630W and the other is 550W. My old GTX 760 works perfectly, so I'm led to the conclusion that I have a dead GTX 970. Am I missing something obvious? Sadly I can't try the card in another machine, since I don't have anything else that can run it.
When I had a dead GPU my computer would still boot up until the 'Welcome' screen, then artifacts would appear and then the computer just freezes. But safe mode running 800x600 or 640x480 would work fine. So have you tried putting the 760 back in and everything works fine, just as soon as the 970 is installed the PC refuses to boot up?
I'm running the 760 now and it hasn't missed a beat. It's not that the PC won't boot with the 970 installed, it won't even power on: it just switches itself back off after a fraction of a second.
Thought as much, cheers. I have a habit of missing something obvious, so just wanted a second opinion. I already contacted Scan to kick off an RMA.
Totally stone dead. Sent it back to Scan last week and a replacement through in fairly short order. Damn fine little card.
It sounds like that card was shorting due to a failure in the production run, so it's a good thing your system shut off immediately.
